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CS^nrp Waslitn^ton 



An Ai&rpaa 

by 



k: 



George Washington 



AN ADDRESS 

BY 

ISAAC nTpHILLIPS 



PRINTED FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION. 



1903 

Bloomington, Illinois 



.63 



"It is but too probable that no plan that 
we propose will be adopted. Perhaps an- 
other dreadful conflict is to be sustained. 
If, to please the people, we offer what we 
ourselves^, disapprove, how can we after- 
wards defend our work ? Let us raise a 
standard to which the wise and the honest 
can repair; the event is in the hands of 

God. — speech of fVaihington in the Federal Con-vention. 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 



Ladies and Gentlemen: 

It is not my purpose to detail to you the life of 
a man or to recite consecutively the history of a 
revolution. My task is rather to tell you in a plain 
way a few of the things which I deem best worth 
knowing- about George Washington. The theme 
seems hackneyed enough, but much as it has been 
discussed, the last word has not ye'i b}^ any means 
been said. Although Washington was born 171 years 
ago and has now been dead more than a century, we 
are but just beginning to know the real man. Like 
most great men he was not fully understood even by 
those contemporaries who apparently had the best 
opportunities for knowing him. Nor is this strange. 
Some fields of human activity develop men of simple 
and transparent lives — men to the very bottoms of 
whose souls all may see; but to achieve immortality, 
either in the field of politics or of war, argues a com- 
plexity of mind and character not to be fathomed 
by every inquiring glance. Hence it is that the 
familiar friends of a dead statesman are sometimes 



found disputing hotly above his grave as to what 
manner of man he really was. 

In his own day Washinglon was belittled by 
friendly fools and slandered by malicious enemies. 
Some wanted to make him king while others thought 
him unfit to be president. Shallow and vulgar agi- 
tators denounced as a monarchist the one man of all 
the world whose steadfastness, valor and ability had 
forever driven the spirit of monarchy from a conti- 
nent. Writhing under the injustice of the men he 
had so nobly served, Washington once declared that 
the abuse he had received could scarcel}'^ with pro- 
priety have been applied to a Nero. To the great 
body of his countrj'-men he was, however, in his own 
day, perhaps the most sacred personality of all his- 
tory, and I wish now to show you how this very 
fact has made it hard for posterity to know^ the real 
Washington. 

When a small statesman of reputation dies, — 
such, for instance, as an average American presi- 
dent, — it is quite possible to know, ten or twenty 
years afterwards, what manner of man he really 
was. He is seen through no distorting medium. 
The extravagance alike of malice and of adulation 
soon subsides, and no one feels it to be to his par- 
ticular interest to print lies about him. The stu- 
dent will, of course, find his virtues and abilities 
much overstated in the obituary notices. Eulogies 



of party friends may run riot in fulsome and unde- 
served praise. If the deceased left influential 
friends and strong family connections, the funeral 
sermon will not fail to assign him a place of extreme 
felicit}^ in the company of the elect in Paradise. 
Those who have eaten of the dead man's political 
cakes will perform the mock ceremony of his canon- 
ization and solemnly destine his mediocre dust to 
the Pantheon. But in the case of a little man, how- 
ever hig"h-blown his reputation, these contemporary 
vauntings and mortuary salaams do little harm. 
They are not taken seriously beyond the immediate 
circle of the mourners or the sect of interested polit- 
ical partisans. A generation may possibly be mis- 
led, but history, refusing to be deceived, enters up, 
at an early day, her inexorable decree of oblivion. 
Of the twenty-five men who have successively been 
president of the United States not above six will 
claim a quarter of a page in the most elaborate en- 
cyclopedia of the twenty-first century. 

But with the choice few whom Clio destines for 
the company of the immortals the case is very dif- 
ferent. No sooner does a man of world-fame go to 
his grave than about his name begin to gather the 
clouds of doubt and the mists of fable. The truly 
great are nearly always silent men, who have not in 
life constantly chattered about themselves. Their 
inmost hearts have not been shown to the rabble. 



The myth-makers therefore find some details to be 
supplied, and they g-ather about the memories of 
such men as naturally and as busily as moths and 
bug-s seek an arc lig'ht in the nif^ht time. Many a 
clod-hopper suddenly wakes up to the stimulating^ 
fact, wholly unrecognized before, that he has been 
actually in close association with one of the elect 
of the earth, — one whose name is sure to be pro- 
nounced with reverence on the far banks of the 
Volg"a and the Po, and whose fame is destined to 
g"row brig"hter and wider as the centuries roll on. 

Then, to use an expressive political phrase, 
there is a rush for the historical band-wag'on. Every 
vain busybody is determined to connect himself in 
some way with this supreme reputation. Men who 
barely saw the great dead pass by, — who were per- 
haps kicked out of his road, — are ready to be "inter- 
viewed." In these days they not only enter the 
newspapers and mag'azines, but even write books, 
to mag-nify their own personal relations with a 
life drama, the world-wide importance of which 
they scarcely suspected until the curtain had been 
rung" down. Curiosity is on tiptoe to know how so 
g^reat a man demeaned himself; what he ate and 
drank; how he slept; what he said to his coach- 
man, his butler, his valet and his cook. All these 
worthies find themselves for the time being impor- 
tant historic personages, and when the ignorant 



find that the world is looking" to them for informa- 
tion, beware of romances! 

As time g"oes on, g'ossiping' dotards, finding none 
living" to contradict them, remember the most silly 
incidents that never took place and detail the most 
remarkable conversations that were never uttered. 
The artists proceed to remove all the wrinkles, 
warts and moles from the face of the dead, hoping 
to make him look pretty, as a great man should. 
The man of low mind manages to remember hap- 
penings and sayings which will show that the 
mighty dead was at least as salacious and low- 
minded as himself. The religious enthusiast is on 
hand with proof that the deceased believed, even to 
the last and toughest item, in his pious creed, while 
the unbeliever is just as intent to claim him for the 
company of the unregenerate. Apocryphal anec- 
dotes and bogus recollections are put forth, often 
under the authority of respectable names, until his- 
tory is for the time being confused and the world 
sees only a colossal form enveloped in mists and 
clouds. The greatest literary fame of the ages es- 
caped this process; but the exception is of the kind 
that makes good the rule, for every man and woman 
who had ever seen William Shakespeare had mould- 
ered into dust before the world recognized that he 
was anything more than just a clever writer. 



The process I have described has been going" on 
for thirty j^ears in the case of Abraham Lincoln. 
His great personality is being made over to suit the 
village gossips. Literary reptiles of all sizes and 
shapes have crawled out of the Sangamon ooze and 
attacked his character under the guise of old friend- 
ship. That fantastic abomination known as the 
historical novel has exploited him for hard cash, 
and got it, too, solely because of the unending in- 
terest which forever attaches to his name, while the 
green flies of envy and hellish wantonness have 
blown even the fair name and memory of his humble 
ancestors. Artists are removing the wrinkles and 
lines from his wonderfully interesting and tragic 
face, determined, apparently, to reduce him to the 
gray level of composite humanity. The most tri- 
fling incidents and sayings, which in their proper 
relation and setting would be of no importance 
whatever, are magnified by the microscopes of curi- 
osity into the materials of sober history, and thus a 
false coloring is put over his entire career and life. 
Some university lecturers, who can only conceive 
of a statesman that will exactly fit into their pat- 
ent, acedemic moulds, are exploiting, before open- 
mouthed audiences, a Lincoln made; up of the shreds 
and patches of motley and buffoonery. The far-see- 
ing, earnest statesman, who, before the year 1860, 
had profoundly touched the political thought of the 

8 



entire Mississippi valley, seems to have escaped the 
attention of these wise students of history. The 
unconventional fooling, which with Lincoln marked 
the recoil from excruciating' cares, is made by these 
worthies the very warp and woof of his life and 
work. To them Lincoln is always in his shirt-sleeves. 
Having described the man who made the "divided 
house" speech and the speeches at Gettysburg and 
at Cooper's Institute — the man who issued the eman- 
cipation proclamation and delivered the second in- 
augural address — as an impossible and superstitious 
clown, these men are driven of necessity to account 
for his phenomenal success as a statesman by the 
fortunate interposition of divine providence. A 
hundred years hence the higher historical criticism 
will be drilling and blasting amid the stratified lay- 
ers of hardened mud and drift with which. the real 
Lincoln is to-day being- overlaid; but the true Abra- 
ham Lincoln will then be found, just as in the last 
twenty years biographers have been discovering the 
real George Washington, 

Much labor has been squandered to find for 
George Washington a lineage fit for so illustrious a 
hero. The subject is, however, one to which Wash- 
ington himself attached slight importance, and it 
may be doubted w^hether, if living, he would ap- 
preciate the labors of a certain veracious antiquary, 
who, not content with tracing the line of his descent 



across the channel to Normandy, has invaded the 
very Valhalla of Norse mythology to find Washing- 
ton's only tit prog'cnitors in Thorfinn and Odin. 

As a matter of fact, there never lived in this 
world a lord, duke, king- or emperor who would not 
have derived honor from even the remotest kinship 
w^ith Georji^e Washington. What we do know that is 
really important concerning the Washington family 
is, that they were a high-spirited and sturdy race, 
which in England turned out some stout soldiers 
whose veins were full of fighting blood. The Wash- 
ingtons served the church and state with steadfast- 
ness and spirit. They were thrifty men of affairs, 
full of the spirit of loyalty to their king, — gallant 
in love and dauntless in war. They were knights 
and gentlemen, who in the time of the Puritan 
revolution maintained the loyal traditions of their 
family, standing faithfully by King Charles in his 
attempt to extend over England the same despotic 
scepter which a later scion of their house struck 
forever from the nerveless hand of the last English 
king who ever assumed to wield it. 

In the year 1656 two brothers of this manly 
race, named, respectively, John and Lawrence Wash- 
ington, came over to America and settled in the 
"Northern neck" of Virginia, at a spot which 
was afterwards included in Westmoreland county. 
Their father, an English clergyman, had been 

10 



stripped of his clerical living- by the hated Puri- 
tans, which fact, together with the generally un- 
congenial air of Puritan England, had been the 
cause of the migration, George Washington was 
the great-grandson of the immigrant John Washing- 
ton, who was himself a soldier of no mean prowess, 
and whose fighting qualities were reproduced in his 
great descendant. The father of George Washing- 
ton was named Augustine. He married for his sec 
ond wife a girl named Mary Ball, much younger 
than himself, whose portraiture history has left ex- 
tremely vague and indistinct. George Washington 
was the first-born child of Augustine Washington 
and Mary Ball, and the Virginia into which he came 
on February 22, 1732, was the fit nursery of a hero. 
The last statement I pause to emphasize. The 
Virginia of the eighteenth centur}'^ had not stooped 
to the business of breeding slaves for the market. 
Its men of consequence were large landed proprie- 
tors. The narrowing influence of the commercial 
spirit had never touched them. Perhaps no com- 
munity that ever existed was ever so well calculated 
to produce men of broad and enlightened views, of 
rugged physical frames, of high public spirit and 
independent action, of steadfast courage and unsel- 
fish devotion to principle, as the Virginia of the 
time of Washington. The public men which Vir- 
ginia could show in that day were never surpassed 

11 



by any body of men that have at one time inhabited 
any state or country of the world. 

The royalist of Virginia and the Puritan of 
Massachusetts both had much to learn in the new 
world. At the beginning" the two represented op- 
posite political principles. The Puritan stood for 
individualism in church and in state; the cavalier 
stood for a religion established by law and for 
chivalrous loyalty to the crown. Each brought his 
principles with him to the new world. They came 
in swarms at alternate periods as the opposing fac- 
tion happened for the time being to be dominant 
and oppressive in England. But in the course of a 
century or more the Puritan and the cavalier found 
themselves educated to a common belief in the 
rights of man and in the proper scope and functions 
of government. In 1776 the Virginia cavalier had 
learned that kings could do much wrong. The 
Massachusetts Puritan in the meantime had learned 
that a theocracy is unfit for the government of free 
men. They all met at last on common ground in a 
common cause, and, proclaiming with Rousseau that 
governments derive their just powers from the con- 
sent of the governed, they went forth shoulder to 
shoulder under the immortal Washington, — that 
rebel who had no treason in him, — to win victories 
for themselves and for the world. 



12 



If we exclude his childhood, there were but 
seven years of Washington's life during which he 
was not in some way connected with the public ser- 
vice, and yet the only office he ever really sought 
was a seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses. His 
father was a well-to-do planter — proprietor of five 
thousand Virginia acres. Two of his elder brothers 
had been educated in England, and George would 
doubtless have received like favor had not his 
father's death when he was but eleven years old 
destined him to a far different — may I not say, for 
his purposes, a more effective — schooling amid fron- 
tier hardships. Enjoyment of his scant inheritance 
from his father's estate — a younger son's portion — 
was postponed until his majority, it yielded no 
immediate income, and at the age of sixteen, with 
but a meager education in books beyond mathe- 
matics, Washington became a surveyor. For three 
years he dived much of the time in the frontier 
wilderness of Virginia. He seems scarcely to have 
had a childhood. When history first takes account 
of him he was a strenuous and methodical worker. 
In the wilderness he learned all that was to be known 
of woodcraft. He sometimes wore clothes made of 
the skins of animals and slept much of the time 
upon the ground, under the trees or on the floor be- 
fore the open fire of some frontier cabin. In this 
period he learned the Indian character thoroughly 

13 



— a lesson that served him well in after life. His 
work as a surveyor was always accurately and 
thoroughly done. 

Yet through all this period of inestimable train- 
ing" filled with hardships and dangers, it must be 
remembered that George Washington belonged to 
the better class of Virginians. He was often at 
Mt. Vernon, the elegant countr}^ seat of his eldest 
half-brother, Lawrence, where he met much gay 
company. He was, too, a frequent visitor in the 
home near by of Thomas Lord Fairfax, a courtly 
English nobleman of sixty, with whom he plied the 
chase, and who, divining the boy's thoroughness 
and capacity, had in fact set him upon his career as 
a surveyor. The dawn was always bright in the 
horizon of his youth. He had always rich, influ- 
ential and courtl}^ friends. He spoke the language 
of gentility, and bore himself, even in youth, much 
like a gentleman of the old school. He was almost, 
but not quite, an aristocrat. Certainly, he could 
eat whether he worked or not; but his was a reso- 
lute soul full of the spirit of independence, which 
forbade him to eat where he had not labored. This 
certainly was not an aristocratic trait. 

By the death of his eldest half-brother, Law- 
rence, and the extinction of his line soon after, 
Washington became owner of the princely estates 
of Mt. Vernon, and in addition to this great wealth 

14 



the rank of major, which the deceased Lawrence 
Washington had held in the Virginia militia, had 
been transferred to the promising younger brother. 
Responsibilities were falling thick upon this youth 
of twenty. He became a soldier just as the mutter- 
ings of war between France and England began to 
be heard along the colonial frontiers. The struggle 
for an empire was taking form, the story of which 
has been so enchantingly told by Parkman, — a 
struggle which was to decide one of the most mo- 
mentous questions which greed of empire ever pro- 
pounded or war ever answered, namely, whether 
Latin civilization or Saxon civilization should domi- 
nate the new world. And when a discreet and 
trusty messenger was needed to face the storms of 
an inclement season and warn the French from the 
frontiers of the Ohio, what fitter man could be found 
for the arduous service by Governor Dinwiddle, of 
Virginia, than the hardy, the intelligent, the daunt- 
less Major George Washington? Through more 
than five hundred miles of trackless forests infested 
by hostile savages, over swollen streams and amid 
almost impassable snows, this youth of twenty-one 
led his little band. When on the return the horses 
became exhausted, Washington, with a single com- 
panion, took the forest paths on foot, and through 
hardships which only a giant frame could have en- 



dured be brought news to Virginia's Governor that 
Prance meant to fight for the West. 

Young as he was, Washington had before been 
well known throughout Virginia, but from the day 
when he made his report of this perilous journey, 
showing the rare tact he had displayed in dealing 
with the French and Indians and the enormous dif- 
ficulties he had overcome, he became the man of 
the hour in the colonies. His name and deeds went 
over to England and were heard in parliament. 
Everybody somehow felt that there was great ma- 
terial in this boy with the old head and the daunt- 
less heart. It was seen that here was a superb 
personal character — a thing rarer and more useful 
even than genius. 

In the war between France and England Wash- 
ington acquired much local reputation as a soldier, 
and it is remarkable that this reputation was 
achieved principally through reverses and defeats. 
The populace usually judge a soldier by his success 
— by results. An excuse, however well grounded, 
can seldom be made to take the place of a victory; 
and yet, when the French war had closed, the name 
of Washington had been connected with no solitary 
campaign or expedition which had not either posi- 
tively failed, or, at best, proven futile. His first 
expedition against Fort Duquesne met with disaster 
at Great Meadows, where Washington surrendered 

16 



his command. The second, under Braddock, wliich 
Washington accompanied as a staff officer, was 
overwhelmed and routed by Indians and French in 
ambush. A third, toward the same quarter, which he 
accompanied as an officer under General Forbes, did 
little important fighting", and arrived only to find a 
deserted fortress. But on Braddock's fatal field Wash- 
ington had shown rare metal and all the qualities 
of a great soldier. In great dangers he was always 
at his best. From Braddock's field he brought away 
the reputation of having saved the English army. 
He was ubiquitous; his coat was riddled with bul- 
lets; three horses fell under him; and when all was 
over it was remembered to his credit that he had 
given Braddock advice which, if heeded, would 
have prevented the disaster. Virginia was filled 
with pride at the recital of his prudence, his daring 
and his strength, and doubted not that on fairer 
fields her cool and daring hero of twenty-three 
would give a great account of the stout heart and 
the rare sense that were in him. Again his name 
and deeds went over sea, and were applauded in the 
country he was destined to dismember and humiliate. 
Washington's subsequent services cover so long 
a period and were so various that I can only 
touch his career in a few places, and all thought of 
chronological order must be abandoned. In valu- 
ing the services of a public man it is necessary to 

17 



take account of the problem which was before him 
for solution, the extent of the difficulties to be over- 
come, the means at hand with which to do the work, 
the manner in which the work was finally done and 
the value of the results achieved. No man wins a 
just fame by doing- thing's which may easily be done. 
The friends of a politician may, indeed, by a S3^stem 
of puffing and advertising", make of him a sort of 
stuffed and tinseled hero, but the little brass g-ods 
of politics meet with rough usag^e from history. 
They die as the worm dieth, and oblivion swallows 
them. War, also, has its false heroes, — dress parade 
warriors that strut for an hour amid clang^ing brass 
and martial noise; but they, too, pass quickly away, 
even as we shall see some bog^us heroes of the 
American revolution falling- from their little pedes- 
tals while the great, silent hero goes on to immor- 
tal fame. 

"Taxation and religion," says John Morley, 
"have ever been the prime movers in human revo- 
lutions," and surely both of these have entered 
largely into the making of America. The implaca- 
ble hostilities of religion peopled the new world; 
taxation without representation made us an inde- 
pendent nation. The contest over the right of 
parliament to tax the American colonies had gone 
through several phases, which I must pass un- 
noticed. It was well known that to press the hated 

18 



taxing" policy would provoke colonial resistance — 
if necessary, with arms. When Lord North became 
prime minister he proceeded to do the thing which 
of all others was most unstatesmanlike and disas- 
trous, namely, he reported and carried a bill to re- 
peal all the taxes except one, — that upon tea, — and 
in these sage words he justified his policy: "The 
properest time," said he, "to exert our right of tax- 
ation is when the right is refused. To temporize is 
to yield; and the authority of the mother country, 
if it is not now supported, will be relinquished for- 
ever. A total repeal cannot be thought of till 
America is prostrate at our feet." Thus were 
abandoned all the real benefits of the hated policy, 
just enough being retained to insure a continuance 
of the quarrel. No wonder real statesmen like 
Chatham and Burke cried out against such fatal 
nonsense. Lord North was far from being a fool, 
and his policy, thus announced, has been taken by 
history as au echo from the weak and despotic mind 
of his master, George III, the best thing about whom 
is that he died a long time ago. 

It quite astonished North and his master to find 
the Americans standing up for a principle. Not the 
amount of the tax, but the principle of it, Franklin 
told parliament, was the question at issue. The in- 
dignant colonists thundered back to King George 
that the right to take one pound implied the right 

19 



to tcike thousands, and that there was no wealth 
which, on such a principle, power guided by cupid- 
ity could not exhaust. Then followed the Boston 
Tea Party, the closing of the Boston port by act of 
parliament, and at length, in quick succession, Lex- 
ington, Concord and Bunker Hill. 

The conduct of the war throughout, on the 
part of Great Britain, was in the last degree stu- 
pid and barbarous. The non-combatant colonists, 
whom it should have been the first object to concil- 
iate, were subjected to every conceivable outrage 
by the British troops. Again and again predatory 
bands were sent out with no other purpose, appar- 
ently, than to punish peaceful inhabitants and de- 
stroy their means of subsistence. Without this 
element of cruelty and wanton outrage it would 
have been difficult for the patriot cause to succeed. 
Little, despotic King George was stupid enough to 
believe the colonists could be awed by a show of 
unbridled power. Too late he learned that he was 
dealing with men of spirit and character, such as it 
never pays to drive to desperation. 

British atrocities bore good fruit. Wherever 
the British army went it made rebels of all that 
were before indifferent. The struggle, begun only 
to resist taxation, was speedily changed into a war 
for independence and the rights of man — a struggle 
the grandest in its object and the most prodigious 

20 



in its consequences which was perhaps ever before 
waged by man. Its theater became the world. It 
became a war of manhood against oppression — 
against personal government — and in the end it did 
the friends of liberty in England as much good as it 
did the patriots in America, for even Lord North 
himself came out of that war declaring that no 
English king ought ever again to be entrusted with 
real power. And ever since that day English mon- 
archs have reigned but have not ruled. The historic 
gyves upon the hands of Edward VII, are probably 
much tighter to-daythan they would have been had 
George Washington never lived. It is hardly too 
much to saj^ our revolutionary war resulted ulti- 
mately in the enfranchisement of the civilized por- 
tion of the human race. 

Now, of all men in the American colonies in the 
summer of 177.') George Washington was the one 
who had apparently least personal interest in the 
war that was coming on. On the day he took 
command of the Continental army he was probably 
the wealthiest man on the American continent. He 
was a planter, and not a trader, and, by the way, 
the best farmer Virginia ever had, content in his 
calling. The trouble which had broken out up at 
Boston was not disturbing the quiet and order of 
his plantations in Virginia. He had had little part 
in the preliminary agitation, and the British troops 

21 



that had been quartered on the people of Boston 
were not troubling" him any at all. He had arrived 
at the age of forty-three, and was respected every- 
where as a man of great substance and character. 
Even in England he was held in high esteem, for he 
had done great and heroic service for the king. 
Why should he fly to arms and jeopardize his all, — 
wealth, reputation, life even, — in an unequal con- 
test over a trifling tax on tea, which would not have 
taken from his pocket five shillings in a year? How 
natural for Washington to have said, "This is only 
a tempest in a teapot, gotten up by the merchants 
of Boston, and they may fight it out." 

But he in fact said a very different thing. His 
words were always few. He rose in the Virginia 
convention and said, "I will raise one thousand 
men, euiist them at my own expense, and march 
myself at their head for the relief of Boston." It 
was this speech, and not Patrick Henry's fierce cry 
for "liberty or death," which was the most momen- 
tous Virginia utterance of that period. When the 
man of silence and action speaks thus it has a mean- 
ing far deeper than the babble of professional 
orators This utterance thrilled every colonial pa- 
triot, and furthermore it jDroved Washington to be a 
statesman as well as a patriot, for in it is seen his 
clear perception that the colonies must support 
each other, and that the chain which was riveted 

22 



upon the freemen of New Eng-land must of necessity 
equally fetter the men of the Southern colonies. 
It was never hard for Georg-e Washington to see 
across the Virginia border. 

In reckoning the services of Washington many 
popular misconceptions must be brushed aside. We 
are accustomed to think of the revolutionary strug- 
gle as something different in kind from other his- 
toric events. A glamour, which it seems sacrilege 
to dispel, rests over the revolutionary fathers. We 
like to believe that in that crisis of our history 
every man did the unselfish duty of a patriot; that 
there were no corruptions, no petty jealousies, and 
that all worked together in harmony in the noble 
cause of liberty and independence. But this pleas- 
ing delusion must be abandoned at the very outset. 
The average American of a century and a quarter 
ago was made of the same frail human material of 
which all men, everywhere, have been made. 

In the first place, it is to be remembered there 
was always a large and very respectable minority 
of the colonists who were loyal to England. An- 
other party, also respectable in numbers and char- 
acter, were almost indifferent, and only the gross 
outrages of the British military domination con- 
verted them into patriots. But there were plenty 
of men, then as now, who were patriotic with their 
vocal organs only — men who every day were slaying 

23 



Englishmen in buckram, and who heroically went 
in for the new flag" and an appropriation. As always 
happens, many agitators who had been active and 
noisy in bringing on the war ceased to be of a par- 
ticle of value to the cause when the tug actually 
came and wise, practical measures were to be de- 
vised. Mere large talk became very cheap when, 
after the defeat of Long Island, Washington's im- 
mediate command had dwindled to three thousand 
tatterdemalions fleeing through the Jerseys before 
a victorious British army. John Adams could give 
his toast for a "short and violent war" when Wash- 
ington's army was starving and freezing at Valle}^ 
Forge, but toasts slew no invaders and fair words 
buttered no parsnips. It was easy for the impetu- 
ous Samuel Adams to sneer at the "Fabian policy" 
of the great man, who was not, indeed, prolific in 
words, but who by sheer endurance and courage was 
none the less Iceepingthe great cause alive through 
the dreary years between the surrender of Burgoyne 
and the final campaign against Yorktown. Even 
thus it was that such men as Greeley, Wendell 
Phillips and Ben Wade carped at the wise measures 
of Abraham Lincoln throughout the dark days of 
our civil war. 

Noisy agitators are not statesmen. Formulat- 
ing grand declarations about the rights of man was 
an easy matter compared with the task Washington 

24 



met at Long- Island, at Trenton and at Yorktown. 
Itisa very pretty thing to say "right makes might," 
but to g-et the requisite number of muskets behind 
the right, so it may be indeed transmuted into 
might, is a mathematical and an economical, as well 
as a moral, question, which calls for brains, char- 
acter and courage. 

The Continental army of which Washington 
took command under the Harvard Elm July 2, 1775, 
had sprung into being spontaneously, without a 
particle of legal authority. It was New England's 
answer to the clatter of the hoofs of the charger 
which bore Paul Revere forth on his midnight ride to 
warn the minute men that the British were moving. 
The appointment of Washington to the command, 
which was moved in Congress by John Adams, was a 
shrewd stroke of the New England men to insure the 
support of the Southern colonies. On the day that 
Washington assumed command that army was an 
unorganized rabble. Our good sons and daughters 
of the American Revolution must not be shocked to 
know that George Washington did not think much 
of the New England army when he first calmly 
looked it over. He wrote confidentially to his 
brother, Lund Washington: "Their officers are the 
most indifferent kind of people I ever saw. I dare 
say the men would fight well enough if properly 
officered, although they are an exceedingly dirty 

25 



and nasty peoi^le. * * * An unaccountable kind of 
stupidity * * * prevails but too generally among" 
the officers of the Massachusetts part of the army, 
who are nearly of the same kidney with the pri- 
vates." He further says in the same letter: "The 
Massachusetts people suffer nothing to go by them 
that they can lay hands upon." Yankee thrift was 
not wanting, you see, even in that early day. Again, 
hear this wail of almost blank despair: "Such dearth 
of public spirit and such want of virtue, such stock- 
jobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain 
advantage of one kind or another, I never saw be- 
fore, and I pray God's mercy that I may never be 
witness to it again. I tremble at the prospect. * * * 
Could I have foreseen what I have experienced and 
am likely to experience, no consideration upon earth 
should have induced me to accept this command." 
The mad haste of the militia to abandon the 
army the moment their terms expired, no matter 
what the emergency, caused the commander much 
chagrin, To the president of Congress he wrote: 
"I am sorry to be necessitated to mention to you the 
egregious want of public spirit which prevails here. 
Instead of pressing to be engaged in the cause of 
their country, which I vainly flattered myself would 
be the case, I find we are likely to be deserted in a 
most critical time." The Connecticut men marched 
out of the trenches at Boston just when the British 

?6 



were being- re-enforced, and Washing-ton 's entreaties 
"were powerless to stop them. "The desire of re- 
tiring into a chimney corner," wrote Washington, 
"seized the troops as soon as their terms expired." 
After the retreat from New York and the Hadson 
the militia deserted in droves, and the only reason 
the army did not then disintegrate, leaving the 
patriot cause stranded and lost, was that there was 
at its head a great and dauntless hero that never in 
all his life struck his colors to foe or fate. 

We are not accustomed to think thus of the 
revolutionary army, nor would the impression to be 
derived from the letters of Washing-ton, written 
early in the war, from which I have quoted, be a 
fair one if nothing- more were said. The truth is, 
that army had in it as good fighting- material as any 
army that every existed It was later joined by 
many good and even great soldiers from the south- 
ern and other colonies. In the course of time Wash- 
ington infused discipline into the unorganized mass, 
but it was never a highly effective body, and I must 
not neglect to tell you why. 

The revolutionary army was always more or less 
demoralized for the reason that it had no org-anized 
government or authority behind it. Some one wittily 
and not inaptly said its commander never knew 
whether or not it would fight, and the British com- 
mander could never rely upon it to run. That army 

27 



did not even have a people behind it, for the colonists 
were not then one homojjeneous people as Ameri- 
cans have since become. An effective army without 
a national spirit back of it is an utter impossibility. 
The Continental Congress was a mere "leag^ue of 
friendship." It could not command; it could only 
advise. It was, indeed, permitted to exercise with- 
out question a few of the hig-hest functions of sov- 
ereig'nty, such as declaring independence, issuing- 
continental money and negotiating treaties; but it 
had no direct relations with the people and could 
enforce its mandates against no unwilling citizen. It 
had no truly national powers. It could not levy taxes 
or compel the enrollment of an army. Without a 
solitary war power it was attempting to carry on a 
great war. When the war opened it found a spon- 
taneous swarm of minute men surrounding Boston, 
and after a good deal of debate decided to adopt 
them as a colonial army, and the adopted child, in 
point of discipline and order, was, of course, as un- 
certain as its adoptive parent. The Congress could 
request the different states to furnish certain quotas 
of soldiers and to contribute their respective pro- 
portions of needed revenue; but scarcel}^ a state 
complied, and Congress had no power to compel obe- 
dience. The inability of Congress to put into the 
field an effective army devolved upon W^ashington 
himself the almost superhuman struggle, lasting for 

28 



seven years, to keep on foot enough men to continue 
the war; and his success is proof of the incompar- 
able streng^th and greatness of his character no 
less than of his wonderful capacity for business. 

But when the lighting- blood of George Wash- 
ington was up nothing ever daunted him. What- 
ever he might say or write to friends in confidence, 
he kept a bold front toward the enemies of his 
country. He saw his problem and he met it. To 
appreciate Washington's ability as a military com- 
mander it is necessary to realize that he very early 
ceased to expect to gain his cause by fighting 
pitched battles. His problem was not to attack and 
destroy the British arm3^ for such an attempt, with 
the resources at his command, would have been 
sheer quixotic folly. His great problem was to 
keep an organized army on foot in the field and 
wait for favorable developments. It was some- 
thing more than a figure of speech which assigned 
him the sobriquet of the American Fabius. 

Allegiances during the colonial regime were all 
local. A New Yorker would fight Burgoyne with 
great spirit in his own state, but was comiDaratively 
indifferent when New Jersey or Pennsylvania was 
the scene of invasion. The people of the Southern 
colonies, under local leaders like Sumter, Marion 
and Pickens, performed wonders of daring and 
energy when their own section was overrun, but 

29 



were comparatively indifferent to outrag"es perpe- 
trated in New Eng-land. Washing-ton's problem 
necessarily became civil as w^ell as military. He 
had to be constantly re-creating- the army with 
which to keep up the strug-gle. Passing- by Con- 
gress, he often appealed directly to the g-overnors 
and the assemblies of the different colonies. His 
pressing- question was not whether he should go 
over and crush Howe or Clinton, but how to keep 
his own army from literally melting away, leaving 
the British in undisputed possession. His writings 
in the period of the war abound largely in urgent, 
almost beseeching, appeals sent to the governors, 
assemblies and public men of the different colonies, 
urging them to come to the aid of the cause. 

As the struggle progressed, Congress from 
doing nothing took to doing positive mischief. It 
was filled with small politicians, many of whom 
were busy with schemes of intrigue against the 
great, stalwart hero who, like another Atlas, was 
supporting the sacred cause of his country. But 
the great body of the people who cared little for 
Congress loved and respected George Washington. 
Somehow they felt he could be trusted in spite of 
the disparagements of the politicians, and he in 
fact became the center and magnet of the pojDular 
allegiance. In great measure he took the place of 
the central authority which was wanting. It is 

30 



literally true that lie stood at the focus of the peo- 
ple's feeling" of loyalty. To them he represented 
the great cause. This i)opular devotion provoked 
the jealousy and sneers of a class of men who af- 
fected to think battles should be foug-ht and won 
without an army. The cold-hearted, treacherous 
adventurer, Charles Lee, was exalted over Wash- 
ing-ton by many who thoug-ht he should be placed 
at the head of the army. The mushroom hero, Ho- 
ratio Gates, upon whom the victory of Saratoga had 
been thrust without the slig^htest merit of his own, 
became the center of what was known as the "Con- 
way cabal," which had for its secret object the dis- 
placement of Washing-ton by the so-called "Hero of 
Saratoga." Even John Adams comes painfully near 
falling under the censure of history for an almost 
proven complicity in this ugly plot. But the great, 
silent man kept his counsel through the dark months 
and years, and maintained his army in the field 
whether it could win battles or not, and it was this 
heroic steadfastness of one supreme character that 
finally won American independence. 

But Washington was capable of something more 
than patience and endurance. When the occasion 
called he could strike like the thunderbolt. This 
was exemplified by the wonderful coup by which he 
surprised Cornwallis at Yorktown and fought the 
battle which practically ended the war. But it was, 

31 



if possible, still more strikingly exemplified on an 
earlier occasion. In the late fall of 1776 the patriot 
cause reached, perhaps, its lowest ebb. New York 
had been taken. Through no fault of the com- 
mander, Port Washing-ton, on the Hudson, had been 
captured with 3000 prisoners. The Continental 
army had dwindled in its retreat across New Jersey 
to a few thousand destitute and discouraged men, 
and Washing-ton, who could do anything- but sur- 
render his cause, had even thoug-ht of g'oing- to the 
mountains to conduct a predatory war. "If over- 
powered," said he, "we must cross the Alleghenies." 
The British army, however, ravaged the Jerseys and 
made some more rebels. That helped some. But 
as the holidays approached it became certain the 
cause would be lost before spring unless something 
decisive could be done. In the language of Thomas 
Paine, the "times that tried men's souls" had come. 
The emergenc}?^ was desperate and desperate must 
be the remedy. Washington resolved to make a 
Christmas call upon the Hessians who were slum- 
bering in fancied security in their winter canton- 
ments along the Delaware. His plan was that three 
columns should cross the river at different places 
at the same hour and make a simultaneous attack, 
but of course only the column commanded by Wash- 
ington in person in fact moved. In the midst of a 
perilous ice flow, Washington stealthily crossed the 

32 



ragingf river in the night with 2500 men, marched 
nine miles to Trenton through a blinding- storm of 
sleet and snow and at the point of the bayonet cap- 
tured nearly a thousand prisoners. As the army 
approached Trenton, General Sullivan sent word 
that the guns and powder were wet. "Tell General 
Sullivan to use the bayonet," said Washington, "for 
the town must be taken." The audacity of the move 
was never surpassed by Bonaparte himself. 

Having re-crossed the Delaware and secured his 
prisoners, Washington, determined not to lose the 
moral effect of his victory by precipitate flight, 
again crossed into New Jersey, and on the bank of 
Assunpink river met the greatly superior force which 
had come out under Cornwallis to capture him. It 
was the supreme crisis of the war for independence. 
In the dead of winter Washington had put the Dela- 
ware between him and his base of supplies, and with 
an army composedlargely of raw militia wasconfront- 
ing a greatly superior force of regulars. The armies 
met on the evening of January second. There was 
severe skirmishing before the night fell, but Cornwal- 
lis, feeling secure in his greatly superior force and 
deeming it impossible that Washington could escape 
him, ordered the battle to cease, saying, "In the morn- 
ing we will go out and bag the old fox." But the "old 
fox" had no notion of being "bagged." By a strat- 
agem worthy of Hannibal he escaped in the night to 

33 



the rear of Cornwallis' army by a road of which Coni- 
wallis was ig'norant. Next morning the British camp 
was awakened by the thunder of Washington's can- 
non at Princeton, where he defeated three regiments 
of British regulars which were just starting to join 
Cornwallis, and captured three hundred more pris- 
oners. He then drew off his ragged, freezing men 
to the impregnable heights of Morristown and 
waited for the leaven to work. The country was 
electrified; faint hearts again took courage; the 
world applauded, and the patriot army began to 
grow. The Jerseys had been redeemed and new 
heart had been put into the waning cause. Fred- 
erick the Great declared it was the most brilliant 
campaign of the century. The sheer audacity of 
Washington had saved his cause, and from that 
hour the British knew they had to deal not only 
with a great man but with a great general. 

I beg to remind you once more that I am only 
using the facts and incidents of the war for inde- 
pendence so far as they serve to illustrate the 
character and abilities of Washington, and with 
this view I now remark that the revolution was 
not, as commonly supposed, one of those desperate 
struggles which men sometimes wage, in which the 
last man is sacrificed and the last dollar expended. 
This is said in no disparagement of the splendid 
heroes w'ho really did the fighting and left the 

34 



tracks of their bare and bleeding- feet upon the 
snows of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. What I 
say is, that owing" to the weakness of the colonial 
government, which had no power to enforce needed 
war measures, there never was an hour, from the 
first g-un at Lexington to the last g^un at Yorktown, 
when the resources of the colonies, either in point 
of men or supplies, were anywhere near exhausted. 
In our war of the rebellion the South made a "last 
ditch" fight, and even the loyal states proceeded in 
that struggle much nearer to an actual exhaustion 
of their resources than the thirteen colonies did in 
their war for independence. Had the Continental 
Congress had power to marshal the resources of 
the colonies in men and money with the same effi- 
ciency and in the same degree that Lincoln's ad- 
ministration marshaled the national resources in 
1864, the struggle might have been as "short and 
violent" as John Adams desired. It must be remem- 
bered that Lord North's government labored under 
many embarrassments at home. Be it said to their 
eternal honor, the American war was not heartily 
supported by the people of England. Pew English- 
men would volunteer to fight the Americans, and a 
conscription was too drastic a measure to be risked. 
There was a vague fear in the British mind of trust- 
ing despotic little King George with a large army. 
It became necessary for North's government to hire 

35 



twenty thousand Hessians to fight the Americans, 
and Frederick the Great, with a fine stroke of irony, 
levied a tax per head on each Hessian soldier pass- 
ing over his soil for service in America, as though 
they had been cattle for export. 

Besides all this, England was beset by enemies 
abroad, as she has always been and is now. She 
has left no nation that ever dealt with her without 
a sense of wrong, and if our old mother England 
should now begin the experiment of respecting the 
rights of other nations and peoples, she would need 
to be decent for at least two hundred years before 
this animosity of centuries would die away. All 
these things made England weak, and if our Colo- 
nial government had been invested in 1731 with 
power to put the same per cent and proportion of 
the men of fighting age into the ranks of the revo- 
lutionary army which Lincoln's administration put 
into the ranks of the Union army in 1864, Washing- 
ton would in that 3'ear have had in the field over 
ninety thousand men instead of a little over thirty 
thousand, and with such an army he could have 
swept the British from the continent without a 
French soldier or a French dollar. Furthermore, 
with such a government the army would have been 
fed and clothed as it never was in fact. At a time 
when the soldiers were starving and almost naked 
there was abundance of clothing and food lying in 

36 



different military depots, bat the commissar}^ de- 
partment under the Congress was so utterly ineffi- 
cient that it failed to transport the stores and issue 
them to the army. 

All this must be considered in giving" George 
Washington his due. The patriotism of the colo- 
nies, of which there was plenty, had no implement 
with which to work — no organized government 
through which it could express itself — no national 
spirit to which appeal could be made. No wonder, 
when Washington came out of that war, that he 
realized as no other man could, the crying need of 
a government for the American people. 

But the recital of these facts only puts in a 
clearer light the great heroism of the incomparable 
men who, in spite of all discouragements, actually 
fought out and won the war of independence. After 
all, it was the few that suffered and bore the revo- 
lutionary burden. There was scarcely a time in 
all the struggle when fully half the colonies were 
not enjoying perfect peace and tranquility. When 
the fighting came their way, the men of any colony 
bestirred themselves and took down their fire locks, 
but when the stress was in a distant colony, only 
the more lively and adventurous spirits shouldered 
their muskets to join the fray. All action was sub- 
stantially voluntary; and it covers the real heroes 
with imperishable glory to relate that they per- 

37 



formed this supreme service to the cause of freedom 
as a willing and voluntary sacrifice. The men 
who, without hope of mone^^ reward or of worldly 
honors, followed their great commander to final 
victory, deserve to be revered, not only by Ameri- 
cans, but by all who love liberty, in every land. 

It is not the idle extravagance of hero-worship 
which makes of Washington the most conspicuous 
case in all history of the one indispensable man 
for the occasion Unquestionably, without George 
Washington the Declaration of Independence would 
have failed. Washington might be defeated in the 
field, but he was never routed, and everybod}^ knew 
he would be ready to fight again. No antagonist, 
whatever his ability or the superiority of his re- 
sources, ever dared to treat Washington as a con- 
temptible antagonist. It was his great name, as 
much as Franklin's diplomacy, that finally secured 
for us the French alliance. His deeds had roused a 
contagion among the French people which almost 
forced the French government to act. As Wash- 
ington's military services are dispassionately re- 
valued, the judgment of history must be that no 
other commander, before or since, ever achieved 
such grand results with such scant and inadequate 
means. 

And at last, after seven years of service with- 
out pay and at a great personal sacrifice, with hair 

38 



whitened and eyes dimmed by sleepless anxieties 
and arduous labor, Washington came back to the 
Cong^ress to resign his commission and lay down his 
military burden. There was one deep solace in his 
bosom: he had won the liberties of his country. 
The American who, in full view of the value and 
the unselfish character of his great service, can 
read the scene of his farewell to his officers at 
Fraunce's Tavern and his resignation of his commis- 
sion before Congress without emotion and with per- 
fectly dry eyes, would confer a service upon his 
country by immediately emigrating. 

Christmas, 1783, found Washington once more 
a private citizen at Mt. Vernon — that haven of so 
many of his unrealized domestic dreams and now 
the mecca of all true patriots. But the great work 
was but half done, and his country yet needed him. 
To drive away King George was one thing; to set 
up something in the place of King George was quite 
another thing. "Taxation without representation" 
had been beaten, but taxation with representation 
presented difficulties almost as great. Questions of 
civil policy as grave as any that ever confronted 
America were pressing for settlement. On many oc- 
casions during his military service Washington had 
demonstrated that he possessed the intellectual 
poise and the clear vision of a great statesman. 
Allow me, at the risk of being tedious, to instance 

a few such cases. 

39 



Once, when tlie army was on the march, many 
children bearing torches came out to escort Wash- 
ing^ton and his officers throug^h a certain town. 
Washington turned to one of the Prencli officers and 
said: ''We may be beaten by the English; it is the 
chance of war; but there," said he, pointing to the 
children, "is the army they will never conquer." 
That was the remark of a statesman who foresaw 
the destiny of America. 

Congress was at one time considering a propo- 
sition for the invasion of Canada jointly by the 
United States and France. Washington wrote con- 
fidentially to the president of Congress, pointing 
out that Canada had but recently been conquered 
from France, and w^as attached to the French 
monarch}^ by blood, manners and religion, and 
that it would be unwise to tempt France, as our 
ally, by putting her in virtual possession of the 
Canadian capital. "Men are very apt," he wrote, 
"to run into extremes. Hatred of England may 
carry some into an excess of confidence in France, 
esi^ecially when motives of gratitude are thrown 
into the scale. * * * But it is a maxim, founded on 
the universal experience of mankind, that no nation 
is to he trusted further than it is bound by its interests. 
In our circumstances we ought to be particularly 
cautious, for we have not yet attained sufficient 
vigor and maturity to recover from the shock of any 

40 



false step." This proved Washing'ton to be a states- 
man of great foresight, incapable of yielding to the 
mere intoxications of the moment. Bitter as was his 
quarrel with England, his steady Saxon judgment 
yet told him that English blood and English insti- 
tutions were a better environment for the new re- 
public than French domination could afford. 

Once in a great crisis of the war Congress 
passed an order virtually investing Washington 
with all the powers of a dictator. Having no real 
power itself. Congress grew recMess in giving power 
away. But hear how this man received the news of 
his dictatorship: "I find," he wrote, "Congress 
have done me the honor to intrust me with powers, 
in my military capacity, of the highest nature and 
almost unlimited extent. Instead of thinking myself 
freed from all civil obligations by this mark of their 
confidence, I shall constantly bear in mind that as 
the sword was the last resort for the preservation 
of our liberties, so it ought to be the first thing laid 
aside when these liberties are established." The 
man who wrote that, and really meant it, was cer- 
tainly the right man to pilot a people's revolution. 

Throug"hout the entire revolution Washington 
maintained a punctilious respect for regularity and 
order in all his proceedings. This trait of his char- 
acter cannot be over-estimated. He even obeyed 
many foolish orders of Congress against his own 

41 



better judgment, rather than assume arbitrary 
powers. He knew as well as any one that Congress 
was inadequate to emergencies, and almost con- 
temptible. The adventurer Charles Lee, before he 
was finally court-marshaled and suspended, was ac- 
customed to speak with contempt of Washington 
because he did not assume the powers of a dictator 
and disregard the directions of Congress, — and Lee, 
we must remember, was in those days a great au- 
thority with the American people; yet such was 
Washington's respect for regularity and order that 
he continued throughout the war scrupulously to 
obey the decrees of Congress. When forced to seize 
upon supplies to keep his men from starvation, he 
accompanied his act by a letter to Congress deplor- 
ing the necessity. "Such procedure,"' he wrote, 
"may give a momentary relief, but if repeated will 
prove of most pernicious consequences. * * * I re- 
gret the occasion that compelled me to the measure, 
and shall consider it the greatest of our misfortunes 
if we shall be under the necessity of practicing it 
again." Thus did the statesman and philosopher 
rise above the mere soldier. 

One of Washington's last acts before resigning 
from the army was to address a letter to the gov- 
ernors of the several states, pointing out the envi- 
able opportunities lying before the citizens of this 
new and free country. "This is the time," he wrote, 

42 



"of their political probation. This is the moment 
that the eyes of the world are drawn upon them. 
This is the moment to establish or ruin their na- 
tional character forever. This is the favorable mo- 
ment to give such a tone to the federal goverment 
as will enable it to answer the needs of its institu- 
tion, or this may be the moment of relaxing- the 
powers of the union." 

But alas! the "powers of the union" were already 
relaxed, if they, indeed, ever existed The record 
of the sure progress the old Confederation was mak- 
ing' toward disintegration and downright anarchy in 
the years between the surrender of Cornwallis and 
the adoption of the federal constitution maybe read 
at length in the luminous pages of Mr. Fiske's 
"Critical Period.'' The culmination of the disorder 
was Shays' rebellion in Massachusetts. To a states- 
man like Washing'ton, who saw things in their true 
proportion and proper relation, who loved the rights 
of a freeman and had proven he would die sooner 
than surrender them, but who at the same time es- 
teemed that liberty a fleeting delusion which was 
not secured to the citizens by firmly established in- 
stitutions, the situation of the country was distress- 
ing in the extreme. His correspondence shows he 
was even more discouraged in those years than he 
was amid the ice g^orges of the Delaware or the in- 
hospitable snows of Valley Forge. To see the ex- 

43 



pected results of seven years of war and sacrifice 
lost in the folly of sectional jealousies and conten- 
tions was indeed hard to men like Washington, who, 
as their principal reward, had counted upon seeing 
their country take a high and honorable place 
among nations. Yet such were the mad intoxica- 
tions which an era of disorder had produced, that 
only the graver and wiser patriots could see whither 
the mad gallop was tending. Men took up the notion 
that governments are bad things in themselves. 
They were gravely speculating whether no govern- 
ment at all might not be better, after all, than even 
the best government. 

Professor Von Hoist (who had more authority 
among us when he was farther away) makes the 
singularly wise observation that "the speediest 
course on the road to despotism is a principle ridden 
without reins." Our forefathers, between the close 
of the revolution and the formation of the Union, 
were riding the principle of individualism not only 
without reins, but with a murderous spur on each 
heel; and they rode it dangerously near to the black 
and bottomless gulf of anarchy. 

In politics, as in everything else, nothing hap- 
pens by chance, but the conditions which generated 
and shaped public opinion changed so rapidly in the 
nineteenth century that what might have seemed 
wisdom at its beginning would have seemed almost 

44 



madness at its close. We are now in an era of con- 
solidation. The people are collecting in the cities; 
capital and industries are combining" in great ag- 
gregations; everything tends toward great centers 
and governments have long been exhibiting this 
same tendency toward concentration. This ten- 
dency has arisen from perfectly natural causes — 
causes which were not operative in 1787, when two 
stage coaches accommodated all the travel and 
carried nearly all the lighter freight between New 
York and Boston. South Carolina and Massachu- 
setts were in those days further apart, by every 
test of affinity, friendship and commerce, than 
New Zealand and New England are to-day. We are 
apt to lose sight of the vast influence of the rail- 
road and telegraph, not only upon trade and com- 
merce, but upon political opinions. Rome built a 
vast empire without electricity and steam, but she 
acquired her possessions by conquest and cemented 
them by the terror of her legions. That was the 
government of force, and its only sanction was the 
sword. No single free constitution could ever have 
held together, politically, such a vast empire as 
the America of our day without the prodigious con- 
solidating force of the railroad and the telegraph. 
Intimacy allays jealousy and disarms distrust. Men 
of distant regions are acquainted to-day as near 
neighbors were not a hundred years ago. Maine 

45 



and California are nearer each other now, com- 
mercialh', sociall}^ and politically, than Illinois and 
Indiana would be without the railroad. All this 
renders it difficult for us to understand the disrupt- 
ing forces which were at work in Washington's 
day, and we are liable to underestimate the debt 
we owe to the few men of serene, unclouded vision^ 
who, rising above the hallucinations of their time, 
built for us the great house of national refuge in 
which to-day we securely dwell. 

Against the hysterical Jacobinism of his time 
Washington interposed the great prestige of his im- 
mortal name. As chairman of the great body of 
men who framed our constitution he saw the waves 
of an angry sea of contention beat over the table 
where he so dispassionatelj^ presided and where his 
silent influence was more potent than the most elo- 
quent speech. While others were more active than 
he in the detail work of framing our constitution, it is 
probable that without the commanding influence of 
Washington the task of securing its adoption by the 
people might never have been accomplished. Noth- 
ing is more certain than that on the da}^ when the 
draft of the constitution was engrossed and signed 
a large majority of the American people were averse 
to the plan of strengthening the central govern- 
ment. The constitution as finally adopted probably 
owed more, so far as its structure and form were 

46 



concerned, to the zeal and talents of Madison than 
to any other man; in the g'reat task of persuading 
the people to adopt it, preference must be given to 
the genius, the eloquence and the industry of Ham- 
ilton; but Washington was the man under the a^gis 
of whose prestige, character and power the smaller 
builders all worked and achieved their ends. 

The first presidency of the new republic pre- 
sented a task from which Washington shrank with 
unfeigned modesty; but he knew the most potent 
reason for the adoption of the new constitution had 
been an almost universal belief that he would be 
made the first president. Only as a most solemn 
duty did he accept the trust. He had helped to 
frame the constitution; the next task was to iater- 
pret it and to make it "march." We have lately 
been trying with ill success to make it swim. It took 
four months to frame the constitution; it has taken 
more than a century to find out what it means, and 
the debate has not yet closed. The truth is, the con- 
stitution means different things now from what it 
meant then. By force of necessity the first con. 
structions of the constitution had to be made by the 
executive; afterwards, the courts took up the work; 
and later, during four years, we went about the 
business with guns in our hands. Some things have 
at last been settled. For instance, it is now settled 
that we are a nation; but even that was not con- 

47 



ceded until Washington had been more than sixty- 
five years in his tomb. It is now known that, 
although not a lawyer, his first interpretations of 
the constitution, as president, were absolutely cor- 
rect. They stand to-day as the law of the land. Nor 
would it be fair to say tlie lawyers of his cabinet 
construed the constitution for him, for they were 
bitterly divided between "strict construction" and 
"loose construction," and Washing-ton, after hear- 
ing both sides, was compelled between the two to 
make up his mind for himself. 

A government thoroughly organized and long 
established, with traditions and common interests 
to be appealed to, grows to be a powerful machine, 
and the machine will run even under the control of 
a small or weak man But such was not the govern- 
ment of which Washington took control on the 30th 
day of April, 1789. Everything about the new gov- 
ernment was crude and untried. It was a time of 
experiment. Washington's voyage lay upon an un- 
charted sea, and he had to take his soundings and 
find the reefs and rocks as he proceeded. It is one 
of the marvels of history that he could have gotten 
through with so few mistakes. Mr. Fiske justly 
says that it is difficult at this day, after more than 
a hundred years, to see how, in any of the great 
crises of his public life, Washington could have done 
better than he did. Had a weak man, a timid man 



or a rash man been our first president, our govern- 
ment would certainly have been overthrown. 

Disputes about our foreign relations were never 
so bitter as during the first eight years of the gov- 
ernment. We then had a "French party" in the 
United States, and French influence sought to domi- 
nate the young republic. In April, 1793, France and 
England again went to war. The Americans hated 
England and loved France, and the French party 
was bent upon involving the United States in an- 
other war with England as the ally of France. 
What more natural to the super-heated American 
mind than that we should rush headlong into this 
war, thereby revenging our wrongs upon England 
and at the same time repaying our debt of gratitude 
to France? Washington adopted and maintained 
his wise neutral policy in the face of a noisy, ad- 
verse public opinion at home, and many of his 
former friends turned against him for the time. 
The government was not yet fairly upon its feet, 
and to have subjected it to the perils of a foreign 
war would have been sheer suicide. 

Besides all this, the "Reign of Terror" in France 
had brought disgrace upon the new principles of 
government. The mad excesses of the revolution 
could hardly be expected to win the favor of a be- 
liever in order like Washington. The government 
of France which had really succored the Americans 

49 



and which had made with them the treaty of alli- 
ance, had been destroyed to the last vestige by the 
revolution. Lafayette was in exile and Louis XVI 
had lost his head. To keep clear of the international 
complications that were thickening about the French 
Directory was the plainest wisdom, yet a large ma- 
jority of the American people angril}? demanded 
that the new and tottering government should 
plunge headlong into the vortex of European war! 
Washington well knew that the French govern- 
ment, with the crafty Vergennes at its head, had 
succored the United States solely out of a desire to 
cripple England, the historic enemy of France. He 
knew it was the cause of France, and not the cause 
of America, that Vergennes had served, and that nei- 
ther Vergennes nor his master, Louis XVI, cared a 
fig for the liberties of the people of the United 
States. It is now well known that if France had 
had her wish the terms of our treaty of jDeace with 
England would have been far less favorable than 
our commissioners at length obtained. Neither the 
imperial domain, extending westward to the Missis- 
sippi, which the persistence of John Jay procured 
for us, nor our right to the Atlantic fisheries, which 
the old bull-dog, John Adams, barked and snarled 
into the treaty, w^ould have been ours had Vergennes 
and his master had their way, Their plan, since 
revealed, was that the United States should be con- 

50 



fined to a little strip of land along- the Atlantic sea- 
board. The truth is, the moribund and despotic 
monarchy of France was really far more afraid of 
the startling- and contagious doctrines contained in 
the Declaration of Independence than ever England 
was. But what I have said concerning the French 
ministry and government must not be applied to 
Lafayette personally, who was throughout his long- 
and stormy life the steadfast friend of human lib- 
erty. Nor can it be said the lower class of French- 
men, just ready to emerge from centuries of crushing 
oppression, did not sincerely sympathize with the 
American cause. 

"Washington's domestic policy must be passed 
with scarcely a word. In his day there were plenty 
of fools in the United States. Let no one deceive 
you with fables about the "good old times." Politi- 
cal clamors were much more intense then than now, 
but no clamor ever moved Washington to do any act 
against his own sense of justice and duty. His was 
the hand of iron in the glove of velvet. Through- 
out all the terrific outcry that accompanied the 
signing and ratification of Jay's treaty of commerce 
with Enofland, the great, silent man did his duty 
and faced a frowning world. At that period there 
were perhaps more statesmen to the square mile in 
America than have ever since been found anywhere 
— except in Kansas during the reign of Populism. 

61 



One of the most virulent of the disputes was that 
provoked by the^, management of the finances, but 
to-day the financial policy of Washing^ton's adminis- 
tration is recognized as one of the supreme glories 
of American history. Amid all the bitterness, how- 
ever, Washing-ton was never seriously accused of 
acting from other than patriotic motives, even by 
the political ghost-dancers of that time, whose 
heated imaginations saw in the harmless ceremo- 
nies of Mrs. Washington's drawing room the sure 
signs of returning "monarchy." Confidence was 
gradually established in the new government, busi- 
ness sought its wonted channels, trade and industry 
revived, and men began at last to do something be- 
yond the range of mere political agitation. 

Thus did this wonderful man, during a long life- 
time, serve his country, and when at length he pre. 
pared to retire to the shades of his beloved Mt, Ver- 
non, after having been eight years president, he 
issued to his countrymen a letter of sage advice, a 
remarkable thing about which is, that those who 
have praised it most highly have always been least 
disposed to practice its wise precepts. 

The snows of age were now upon Washington, 
but he was vigorous still, and even once more his 
country called him. France was so sure she had 
with her a majority among the American people, 
that her outrages upon American commerce and her 



supercilious treatment of our commissioners as illus- 
trated in the famous "X. Y-.Z-." correspondence had 
at length brought tiie two nations to the point of 
war. Provision was made for an army and Wash- 
ington was made its commander. It had been forty- 
five years since, at the age of twenty-one, he went 
to warn the French garrisons from the western 
frontier, and now at sixty-six he was still ready to 
answer the call of duty. The war cloud passed, 
however, without any serious fighting, and very 
soon, in the quiet of his beautiful estates at Mt.Ver- 
non, Washington passed to his reward at the age 
of a little less than sixty-eight. He died as he had 
lived, facing even death as serenely as he had 
faced the hardships, perplexities and dangers of a 
long and strenuous life. With heroic fortitude he 
bore the great, though short, suffering of his last 
illness, and was as sweetly considerate of the com- 
fort of those about him in his last hour as though he 
had been ia the bloom of health. Methodical and 
heroic to the last second, he died while in the act 
of counting his own pulse. 

Twenty years ago George Washington, the man, 
was almost lost to his countrymen. His memory 
had been given over to the myth makers and gos- 
sips — peddlers of pious and impossible tales Jared 
Sparks took pains to correct all his bad spelling 
and faulty syntax, deeming that so great a man 

53 



must be made to write with the elegance of Addi- 
son. The puerile inventions of Parson Weems had 
completely usurped the period of his simple and 
natural boyhood. To the averag"e American, Wash- 
ington's life did not ai:)peal, for either he appeared 
too superhumanly good for this world, or his atti- 
tude was so cold and lifeless and the pedestal on 
which he had been placed was so lofty that he 
seemed rather like some pagan deity of the antique 
world than a real man of flesh and blood. In short, 
Washington had become in the popular imagination 
a stalking and stately ghost, and we were moved to 
exclaim, in the words of Macbeth: 

"Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; 
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes 
Which thou dost glare with." 

If, perchance, we did catch an occasional 
glimpse of Washington out of his attitudes of lonely, 
professional greatness, that accusing hatchet was 
forever in his hand, painfully reminding us that he 
could not tell a lie, — a circumstance which tended 
to put him completely out of fellowship with the 
great body of his later countrymen who have found 
by long practice that they can tell thousands of 
them. 

We are no longer willing to let George Wash- 
ington recline as a mythical giant against the hori- 
zon of the past. Blind, unreasoning worship is not 

54 



the highest tribute which gratitude can pay to 
greatness. Only that opinion which is made up 
with discrimination is truly valuable, and we need 
not fear that any test which historic criticism will 
everapply to George Washington will leave him less 
a hero than he was made by the first impulsive 
gratitude of his countrymen. 

We have the comforting and well-grounded as- 
surance of a recent biographer that no portrait 
ever painted of Washington resembled him. What 
the man really was in his person is better gathered 
from written descriptions than from portraits. He 
has been not unfitly described as possessing a "pro- 
digious animal nature." In moments of terrible 
peril he was always a lion. I have already spoken 
of his extreme activity and intrepid self-possession 
on the fatal field of Braddock's defeat. At Prince- 
ton, we are told, he galloped within thirty yards of 
the muzzles of bellowing English muskets, and in 
the awful crisis of the retreat from Long Island 
he was forty-eight consecutive hours in the saddle. 
Such a man was made of no ordinary stuff. 

Thomas Jefferson pronounced Washington the 
best and most graceful horseman of his age. He 
was six feet two or three inches in height, straight 
as an arrow, and weighed in middle and later life 
not far from two hundred and twenty pounds. His 
great frame would have carried another hundred 

LrfC. 55 



weight without exhibiting- excessive corpulency. 
His bones and joints were exceptionally large. His 
arms and legs were long in proportion to his height. 
His feet and hands were enormous. His boots were 
number thirteen and his gloves had to be made to 
order. His shoulders and hips were broad, but his 
chest was not deep and his waist was slender. 
Nature had equipped him with the muscles of a 
gladiator, and Sandow would have had small ad- 
vantage of him in feats of sheer physical strength. 
His head, small in proportion to his frame, was in 
youth covered with dark-brown hair and sat most 
gracefully upon a superb neck and shoulders. His 
nose and mouth, like those of other forceful men, 
were large. His eyes were in color grayish blue, set 
wide apart in bony sockets of abnormal size, and 
were oyerhung by a beetling brow. His teeth were 
bad, and at length were exchanged for artificial 
ones. His face was colorless and deeply pitted with 
the small-pox. 

Within this commanding frame there presided 
a spirit of stately grace and benignant courtesy. 
Washington's deportment was easy, erect, noble 
and reserved. There was an unequaled dignity in 
his mere presence, and his uniform self-possession 
was dashed by a suggestion of shyness that added 
great interest to his personalty. His bearing was 
high without haughtiness, kind without condescen- 

56 



sion, and grave without being sullen. In the whole 
man there was a subtle charm which made him a 
favorite at first sight — a charm no artist ever 
caught and no pen ever adequately described. The 
French counts and marquises, who came over to 
America looking to see a rough-and-ready soldier 
with native vigor but without polish, were amazed 
to find at the head of the colonial army a gentleman 
of as high breeding and elegant manners as the 
French court had ever known. 

Washington was naturally a man of the fiercest 
passions — passions which only his iron will could 
have controlled. The lightning of his anger was 
terrible, and cowed even strong men. There is 
good evidence that he cursed the villain Charles 
Lee on the battlefield of Monmouth, and in view of 
the great provocation I am unwilling to believe the 
oath was not instantly recorded to his credit in the 
Book of Life. In business matters he was serious, 
exact and tireless, completing to the minutest detail 
whatever work he undertook. He was endowed 
with a most prodigious capacity for taking pains. 
Even and temperate in all things, Washington in- 
dulged no taste or passion to excess. He was fond 
of a good horse, and was frequently in attendance 
upon the races. He dearly loved field sports and 
was a reckless rider in the chase. He kept fox 
hounds and gave them romantic and poetic names. 

57 



He was fond of dancing', and General Greene is au- 
thority for the statement that once during the revo- 
lution Washington and Mrs. Greene danced for four 
hours without quitting tlie floor. But it was the 
stately minuet he danced; I cannot so much as think 
of George Washington in that mad, satanic whirl 
known as the two-step. He drank wine moderately 
at meat, but on no occasion to excess. He never 
allowed pleasure to supersede business, and it is 
doubtful whether any other career can be found 
wherein the merely trivial and agreeable were ever 
so freely indulged and yet at the same time so ap- 
propriately subordinated to the more grave and im- 
portant concerns of life. His greatest power lay in 
the soundness of his judgment and in the steadfast- 
ness of his character. The four great words of his 
fitting description are: wisdom, probity, strength 
and self-command. His name is perhaps the most 
illustrious in human annals. 

Washing"ton practiced none of the arts of the 
political demagogue. He valued highly the good 
opinion of his fellow citizens, yet he never turned 
in the estimation of a hair from the course his 
judgment of duty dictated in order to win popular 
applause. He was a shrewd judge of men, but he 
estimated them upon their merits and not by their 
pedigrees. He indulged in no nauseating and ful- 
some adulation of the masses, and his career is a 

58 



standing rebuke to the little men who ride into 
prominence on the tides of opportunity and j:raiii 
cheap applause by flattering the ignorant. 

It would be in ill taste to attempt to gild this 
great record of self-sacrifice, courage and righteous- 
ness with the tinsel of fine words. Mere flowers of 
tawdry rhetoric have no place in this noble story, 
and this inadequate review may fittingly close with 
the oft-quoted words of a great Englishman: "It 
will be," said Lord Brougham, "the duty of the his- 
torian and tiie sage of all nations to let no occasion 
pass of commemorating this illustrious man, and 
until time shall be no more will a test of the progress 
which our race has made in wisdom and virtue be 
derived from the veneration paid to the immortal 
name of Washington." 



59 



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